While product and category pages play a crucial role in SEO, there’s another factor that can give your ecommerce website an edge: SEO taxonomy.
Think of it as organizing your digital storefront in a way that both search engines and shoppers love. By mastering SEO taxonomy, you'll create a website structure that's easy to navigate and primed for better search rankings.
In this article, we explore the types, best practices and some great examples of SEO taxonomy you can reference to optimize your ecommerce website.
What is SEO Taxonomy?
SEO taxonomy is the strategic organization and categorization of your website's content to improve search engine visibility and user experience. It's like creating a well-organized filing system for your digital assets, making it easier for both search engines and visitors to navigate your site.
At its core, site taxonomy involves structuring your content into logical categories and subcategories. This hierarchical arrangement helps search engines understand the relationships between different pages on your site.
For example, an ecommerce store might organize products into main overarching categories like "electronics," "clothing," and "home decor," with subcategories beneath each.
Why is SEO Taxonomy Important?
SEO taxonomy is the backbone that supports your site's structure, making it easier for both search engines and users to navigate and understand your content. But why exactly is site taxonomy so crucial for your SEO efforts?
Improved User Experience
A well-organized website taxonomy helps visitors find what they're looking for quickly and easily. When customers can effortlessly browse your product categories and subcategories, they're more likely to stick around and make a purchase. This reduced bounce rate signals to search engines that your site is valuable, potentially boosting your rankings.
Enhanced Search Engine Crawling
Search engine bots love a logical website structure. By implementing a solid taxonomy SEO strategy, you're essentially laying out a clear roadmap for these bots to follow. This allows them to index your pages more efficiently, ensuring that your products and content have a better chance of appearing in relevant search results.
Better Internal Linking
A strong SEO taxonomy naturally creates opportunities for strategic internal linking. As you categorize and subcategorize your products, you're building a web of related pages. This not only helps distribute link equity throughout your site but also encourages visitors to explore more of your offerings, increasing engagement and potentially sales.
We'd like to think of a well-crafted taxonomy as like a silent salesperson, guiding both search engines and customers through your digital storefront with ease and precision.
Different Types of SEO Taxonomy
When it comes to organizing your ecommerce website, understanding the various types of SEO taxonomy is crucial. Let's explore some common approaches that can help boost your site's visibility and user experience.
- Hierarchical taxonomy
- Flat taxonomy
- Faceted taxonomy
- Network taxonomy
Hierarchical Taxonomy
This is the most common and straightforward taxonomy type. It involves organizing content into a parent-child relationship, with overarching categories at the top that branch out into narrower subcategories.
This structure mimics how we naturally classify information in our minds, making it easy for users to navigate. It's best for ecommerce brands with massive product catalogs, or large retailers selling diverse products across various categories.
Flat Taxonomy
As the name implies, a flat taxonomy has no hierarchical levels—all categories exist on a single plane. This approach works well for websites with a limited number of products or content types.
Faceted Taxonomy
This taxonomy allows users to explore content through multiple filters or facets like price, color, size, etc. Faceted taxonomies are particularly useful for ecommerce sites with diverse product catalogs, as they enable customers to quickly narrow down their search based on specific criteria.
A lateral taxonomy structure often complements faceted taxonomies by allowing products to exist in multiple categories simultaneously rather than being confined to a single hierarchical path.
Network Taxonomy
In a network taxonomy, content is interconnected through associative relationships rather than strict hierarchies.
It enables lateral taxonomy by linking related products, categories, or content across different parts of the website, rather than following a rigid top-down structure. This supports AI-powered product recommendations such as "frequently bought together" or "you may also like", enhancing product discovery and cross-selling opportunities.
While network taxonomies offer flexibility, they can be more challenging to implement and may require more user guidance to navigate effectively.
The ideal taxonomy structure depends on the nature of your website, products, and user needs. Many sites employ a hybrid approach, combining elements of different taxonomy types to create a customized solution that works best for their unique circumstances.
SEO Taxonomy Best Practices
To ensure your ecommerce site's taxonomy is optimized for search engines and user experience, consider these best practices:
Understand your audience and how they search
Understanding your target audience's behavior and search patterns is crucial for structuring an effective taxonomy.
Start by conducting keyword research to identify the most relevant keywords your audience use when searching for products in your niche. Analyze your website analytics and user feedback to identify common search queries, pain points, and how users navigate your site.
This insight can inform your category naming conventions, hierarchy, and filtering options. For instance, if many users search for "running shoes" rather than "athletic footwear," you may want to prioritize the former term in your taxonomy.
Or, if they frequently search for specific product attributes like "floral print dresses" or "slim fit chinos," you should incorporate those terms into your faceted filters and category names.
Organize your content into categories and subcategories
Organize your product catalog into logical categories and subcategories that reflect how your customers think about and search for your products. A well-structured hierarchy makes it easier for search engines to understand the relationships between your content and for users to navigate and find what they need.
Start with broad, top-level categories (e.g., "clothing," "electronics," "home & garden"), and then break those down into more specific subcategories (e.g., "women's clothing," "laptops," "outdoor furniture"). Aim for a depth of 3-4 levels maximum to avoid overwhelming users and overcomplicating navigation.
Use clear, descriptive category names that accurately reflect the products within. Avoid vague or confusing labels that could lead to misunderstandings. For example, "tops" is clearer than "apparel" as a subcategory of "women's clothing."
Additionally, be consistent with your terminology across categories and pages. If you use "shirts" in one place, don't switch to "tops" elsewhere for the same products.
Optimize your category and product pages
Each category and product page is a valuable SEO asset that needs to be optimized for relevant keywords and search intent. Here are some tips:
- Craft compelling, keyword-rich titles and meta descriptions that accurately describe the page content and entice clicks.
- Write unique, informative product descriptions using your target keywords naturally and avoiding keyword stuffing.
- Optimize image alt text and filenames with relevant keywords.
- Implement schema markup to provide additional context about your products to search engines.
- Ensure fast page load speeds by compressing images and leveraging browser caching.
Utilize breadcrumb navigation
Breadcrumb navigation trails are a user-friendly way to show a page's location within your site's hierarchy. They provide additional context and make it easier for visitors to navigate up and down category levels.
Search engines also value breadcrumbs as they help clarify the relationships between pages, improving crawlability and content understanding.
Implement structured data markup for breadcrumbs to maximize their SEO impact.
Leverage internal linking
Internal linking is a powerful way to distribute authority throughout your site and guide users (and search engines) to related products and categories.
Link from relevant category pages to specific product pages, and vice versa. You can also link between related product pages using contextual anchor text like "you may also like" sections.
Just be sure to keep your internal linking natural and focused on the user experience—don't go overboard with excessive links that could be considered manipulative in the eyes of Google.
Regularly review and update your taxonomy
Your ecommerce product catalog is not static—you'll likely be adding new products and categories over time. It's crucial to regularly review and update your site's taxonomy to ensure it remains organized, logical, and user-friendly.
Periodically audit your categories and subcategories, looking for opportunities to consolidate, split, or rename them based on your evolving product mix and how customers browse and search. Monitor search data and user behavior to identify areas of confusion or poor navigation experiences.
You'll also want to keep an eye on emerging product trends and search queries to determine if you need to create new categories to meet changing customer demands.
Automate tagging and taxonomy with Hypotenuse AI
Managing taxonomy at scale can quickly become overwhelming, especially with a growing product catalog. If resources are tight, AI can take the heavy lifting off your plate.
Hypotenuse AI’s automated product tagging and taxonomy feature intelligently categorizes your products—whether using your custom taxonomy, Google’s taxonomy, or industry best practices.
It ensures accurate, intuitive organization while adapting to emerging trends, helping you maintain a well-structured catalog with minimal effort.
Great Website Taxonomy Examples
Now, let's explore some stellar examples of website taxonomy:
MESHKI's Website Taxonomy
MESHKI uses clear parent categories and subcategories, making browsing effortless. For example, under Dresses, they further break it down by color, fabric and occasion. This also helps with cross internal linking where one child category can be linked from two parent categories.
On the navigation bar, they also include trending categories. This helps shoppers find what they see on social media, fashion magazines, or on the streets easily.
Their ecommerce filters help website visitors narrow down their options, with key fashion attributes like color, material, and even their favorite asset.
Tip: Combine structured navigation with dynamic collections to highlight seasonal trends and outfit inspiration.
West Elm's Website Taxonomy
West Elm categorizes their products based on room type, product type, and design style—just like how someone looking for furniture would search.
Filters are also tailored to their categories. For example, under the sofa category, you can filter by "seat firmness", "seat height", "wood finish", "chair style", etc.
Their "Ideas & Advice" section also offers design inspiration that seamlessly links to product categories. This shows how it doesn't always have to be hierarchical or category to category.
Tip: Organize products in a way that aligns with how customers think about furnishing spaces—by room, style, and function.
Fastenal's Website Taxonomy
Fastenal breaks down thousands of SKUs into functional categories like "abrasives", "electrical", or "fasteners".
They use detail technical filters like "abrasive material", "grade", or "grit", which are terms that customers in the market understand.
Comparison tables enhance usability by letting customers evaluate options in just a few clicks.
Tip: For complex product catalogs, a detailed, technical taxonomy with strong filtering options is essential for precision and efficiency.
Conclusion
A well-structured taxonomy not only improves the shopping experience but also benefits your SEO efforts by aligning with user intent.
Your taxonomy should reflect how customers think about and search for products. Conduct user research, analyze search data, and continuously optimize based on customer behavior and feedback.
And as your product catalog evolves, regularly review and refine your taxonomy to ensure it remains relevant and effective. Embrace a customer-centric approach, and your ecommerce website will thrive with an optimized structure that delights and converts visitors into loyal customers.
